Learn How to Play “Free Fallin'” on Guitar

This song was a big hit from Tom Petty’s Full Moon Fever album. To learn how to play Free Fallin on guitar, all you need to know are three easy chords and simple strumming patterns.

How to Play Free Fallin

Listen to the song in the video above to remember how it goes.

Get the guitar chords and lyrics to learn how to play Free Fallin on guitar. The music indicates to use a capo at the 3rd fret to put it in the key of F like the original. Don’t let this confuse you, as you still use the fingerings for the easy D, G and Asus4 chords (as seen below). Feel free to play it without a capo. Note that the G chord below is different than in the sheet music, to make playing transitions from D to G easier.

Watch the video below to see how to play the chords for Free Fallin’ and the basic chord progression. It is good to use a metronome (as found in the eMedia Guitar Toolkit) to help you keep a steady tempo.

Watch this video from eMedia Interactive Rock Guitar, which uses the eMedia Animated Fretboard to make it even easier for you to see how to change between the D and G chords.

eMedia Interactive Rock Guitar also helps you master common guitar techniques like palm muting and barre chords, which are used in the middle section of Free Fallin’ and in many other rock, pop and country songs. It also includes Jam tracks to help you learn lead guitar and other great guitar songs like Tired of Waiting for You and You Really Got Me (Kinks), All Right Now (Free) and others.

Intermediate Version

If you would like to learn how to play Free Fallin’ on guitar with the same chord voicings as Tom Petty, then you will need to use slightly more difficult chord fingerings. His version has the guitar with a capo at the first fret and uses the E, Aadd9, and Bsus4 chords. as seen in the video below.